Her Name Is Aida! By Theresa Gaynord

 

Her Name Is Aida by Theresa Gaynord

 

I walk through the clattering garbage pails

where rats have started to converge; the

bus stops at corners where even the moon

is afraid to change shape as to not cause

attention. In a way, I can explain everything

by the remodeled faces I see every single

morning down by my street, and I know quite

well what it's like to give up, to not give a damn

anymore.

 

There's an old black woman who drinks from

a large red and white milk container on the

stoop of her brownstone apartment. Open

cashmere coat, nightgown and sweat socks

tell me she has run the course of life, trying

to do everything right, before she accepted

inevitable defeat. She is not tempted to say

anything to me whatsoever, nor I to her, but the

way she sits with legs astride beckon me to ask

for her name, just a first name,

 

anything to identify her with. We go through

the motions, rising and leaving without ever

really connecting with one another. I see the

faces sooner than I hear the voices but they

speak to me just as powerfully, crying out for

help I cannot offer them. I'm disconnected;

I cut incisions into my bare skin just to feel. The

beads of sweat from my body bubble as I sit in

a steamy bathtub with the lights off while blood

trembles across the mist of porcelain.

 

The little wrinkles from the water serve as

artificial aging, something good to see, to think

about when muscles soften and all you have

left is what you carry with you inside; all your

loves, all your sorrows, stacked up in your heart,

alone, all alone. I need to have somebody with

me, when fear comes. Someone who will take

away the loneliness, who doesn't mind the hot

baths and the sit-downs under a freezing cold

shower, someone who can be as merciful to

 

my own romantic Bronx setting as I am. I hold

my arm up across my face, afraid to be seen as

dark red trickles down my armpit, my breasts

heaving under the crimson pool, under the

shallow breaths of insult and injury yet there

is no physical pain that scratches and scrawls

at my soul. Dirt lies deep, and it's not found

on the surface of a shower floor, or in residuals

on a washcloth. Walk cross-town someday and open

your eyes so that they meet that of your neighbors,

 

bring the old woman on the stoop some warm

percolated coffee for her milk as you drink

and smile between sips together. Show her your

scars from cutting, and your bruises from all the

times you jumped the subway turnstile because

you had to get work and didn't have enough cash

for the fare. Watch as the sun disappears under

the canopy of the squatters building across the way

where tonight is poker and beer night under the stars,

just you, and Aida. Oh yeah, her name is Aida.